Sorry this is so long after NYE, but I haven't had a lot of time.

I went to a party at a friends house. I was fashionably late, since I had to work earlier in the evening. There was one HB8 that I've had my eye on. She and I had been chatting off an on at other events, and I saw that night as my opportunity.

Well, I didn't know that she had started getting involved with another friend of mine. I made no progress in talking with her. Luckily there was an even hotter HB9.

I walked over to HB9 and her friend (also an HB9) and introduced myself, asked how they got there, etc. Found out that my HB9 is.not a native English speaker.

So I left and started chatting with the other guests. I eventually got back around to my HB9 and started trying to guess where she was from. Typically I'm decent at this, but tonight was major fail. Turns out she was Swiss. She goes out to smoke a fig, asked if I'd like to join. I turned her down, since I dont generally smoke.

Time passes again. Get back to talking to her, we start going through the pics on her phone, all the while I'm ramping up the kino. I had my arm around her while she was going through her pics.

I'm thinking I'm doing well. Then this other dude starting moving in on her...badly. she gets freaked out and bounces. At this point, the absynthe and champagne came out, and things took a turn.

So, not the most successful night. A few lessons learned: * My social group is guy heavy, and at least 3 of the guys have natural game and use it whenever a woman enters the scene. This makes what I'm trying to do hard, and I feel like I'm a middle school quarterback playing the Patriots. What's a way to turn that to my advantage? * Absynthe is the Devil * I still don't have decent conversation topics. I dislike talking about my job (flight instructor), because there's such a stereotype attached to pilots. On the other hand, I can talk flying for hours.